PGA Championship 2017: Spieth to miss career slam after two disappointing rounds

It appears Jordan Spieth will have to wait another year to try and win the career Grand Slam.

The world’s second-ranked golfer entered the week with a chance to become the youngest in history to earn a career grand slam, but he shot his second over-par round Friday at the US PGA Championship to fall 11 strokes off the lead.

“Felt like I hit some good shots. The pins were in such tough locations, it was hard to get the ball to feed to the hole,” Spieth said after his round. “It’s a tough track where they are putting these flag sticks. With one birdie, it’s going to be hard to post a solid round. On to the weekend to try and fire at stuff. Nothing to lose.”

While Spieth will never give up, he has accepted the fact that victory may not be in the cards this week.

“I kind of accept the fact that I’m essentially out of this tournament pending some form of crazy stuff the next couple of days,” he said. “I’m sure going to give it a try. As we came out of the rain delay, it was — I’m a little upset at the bailing out I did on a couple of shots. The tee shot on 14, tee shot on 15, 18. Just no reason to bail out on those at this point in the position I was in. So I was a little frustrated there. Other than that, my frustrations were letting me down. Just tried to calm down and simplify things a little bit.”

Spieth shot a two-over 73 Friday to fall to three-over for the tournament. He finished his second round with just one birdie to three bogeys. A rain delay — lasting close to two hours — broke up Spieth’s round. He thought he left some shots out on the course after the break.

“It was more gettable after the rain delay than it was before, no doubt about it,” Spieth said. “I played even par after the delay and that’s not very good, in my opinion, on those holes that we had left. I made a birdie and then a couple of pars.

“Went over to 14 and you have got [a] 280 par-four and then a reachable par-five in a row. 16 and 18 weren’t playing that hard either with softer conditions and not a breath of wind. It’s still difficult to make birdies, but if you hit the right shots, we had definitely had softer conditions which made it easier.”

What does Spieth think he needs to shoot Saturday to get back in the mix?

“Probably 54 would be nice,” he said. “I don’t know, as low as I can go.”